Developed by Stirfire Studios
Published by Stirfire Studios
Reviewed on PlayStation VR (also available on Steam and HTC VIVE)
The PlayStation Store has tons of VR content to enjoy and is still adding more in 2017 with no signs of slowing down. The new VR puzzle game Symphony of the Machine has arrived on the PSN. Symphony of the Machine throws you into a mysterious world with a giant tower that has a beam of light shooting from its center.
In Symphony of the Machine, you’ll quickly reach the tower and ascend to the top of the tower. Once at the top, you’ll find a hovering robot friend that will assist you with starting puzzles and helps you carry items while you move around. Moving, however, is more like teleporting to the spot you want to stand on. You press the Triangle or Square buttons to rotate yourself. When starting a puzzle, your robot friend will give you a mirror and later on a splitter to shoot a beam of light in two directions. From there he’ll start bringing you plants along with a bulb.
Symphony of the Machine has a really simple gameplay mechanic: the goal for each puzzle is to use the mirror to redirect the beam of light onto a glyph to help grow the plant, depending on what weather condition is needed to help make it grow. The puzzles never feel too hard as most of them are self-explanatory via picture prompts shown on each plant or from your robot buddy. I do wish that there was more variety to solving the puzzles in later stages of the game. There are a total of four glyphs that each represents different weather conditions within the world: Sun, Rain, Wind, and Cloudy. One plant will require three different weather conditions in order for it to be a fully grown plant. Another plant might only need sun while a second plant will need sun and wind. As you grow plants in the tower, the world itself will be populated with the plants you’re growing at the time.
As a VR game, the environments really pops out, looks cool, and adds a relaxing chill vibe to the gameplay. When changing the weather, you can see the raindrops as you look over the edge the tower’s rail, which makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of a thunderstorm. Sadly you’re only confined to moving around within the tower. You can’t explore more areas of the game or explore another tower.
Not all is perfect with Symphony of the Machine. It has some technical issues. While playing with a PlayStation 4 controller, the camera loses tracking very easy. I decided to switch over to two Move controllers and the tracking became much better, but it would still have problems consistently tracking the controllers. It becomes very annoying when you’re trying to grab an item and place it precisely, especially since the item’s location is reset if you mess up. Another issue I had was with my robot buddy. At times, when he would bring me items, he would often get confused on which side to orientate himself in order to grab an item from him. If too many items are in his path towards you, he would just get stuck under the item until you either reposition yourself or move the item from his path. In some cases, it can be hard to aim and reflect light off mirrors due to the aforementioned tracking issues. I have a fairly decent sized space to play around in and couldn’t understand why my camera couldn’t recognize the Move controllers.
Symphony of the Machine is a relaxing VR gaming experience that can be completed within an hour and a half. The puzzle are fun to solve and it doesn’t take too long to grow each plant. Symphony of the Machine lets you go at your own pace. There isn’t a timer that pushes you to solve a puzzle fast nor does it force you to start you over if you make one wrong move. Even though it’s not the perfect PSVR game due to the various tracking issues, this title would be a good showcase game to show a skeptical person how fun VR games and VR experiences can be. VR gaming is slowly becoming a new, exciting way to enjoy games and Symphony of the Machine highlights the concept very well.   Â
